Sunday, January 20, 2008

And the Rip Van Winkle Award Goes to...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J. - I deserve what critic James Berardinelli recently called "The Rip Van Winkle Award."

Apparently for the past few months there has been some kind of "viral" marketing campaign on the Internet to promote this new monster movie called Cloverfield.

Where have I been???

I check YouTube every day, I read film blogs, and yet I've barely heard a thing about this movie until this past week. I had no idea it had built up such a massive amount of hype.

I vaguely remember seeing a trailer for a first-person monster movie without a title months ago (maybe preceding Superbad), but I guess it didn't intrigue me enough to find out about it. I also vaguely remember catching a TV ad for it, but it didn't fascinate me then either.

Now that I've discovered all of this way after the fact, should I feel ashamed that I've apparently become so disconnected with pop culture that the Cloverfield hype machine passed me by entirely? Have I become that insulated in my own little world? (Because of the bountiful of repeats that have come about as a result of the writer's strike, I've pretty much steered clear of TV for the past few weeks---yes, even with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert back on the air, because apparently I'm no longer getting Comedy Central, and many other channels, from the tuner that's installed in our family HDTVs anymore...and likely won't for a long while, unless my mother suddenly decides to become less of a cheapskate and allow us to get cable. Maybe Comcast has gotten wise to HDTV tuners picking up their signal or something, and have started blocking certain channels.)

I actually had a bit of trouble sleeping last night worrying about the implications of this...

And as for the movie itself...since I somehow didn't allow hype to get me to see it on Friday night, should I even bother to see it at all? I highly doubt I'm missing anything, especially with films like The Diving Bell and the Butterflyand Persepolisstill to see (not to mentionThere Will Be Blood to chew over some more).

Whatever man. I'm probably not the only one (just maybe the only one in my age group).

2 comments:

You should be happy. Your Giants are going to the Super Bowl. I'll be coming back to my beloved Jersey to watch the Super Bowl at my old hangout. I'll root for the Giants, a team I normally despise, because I hate the Patriots even more.

As for Cloverfield, you aren't missing anything. It's unwatchable garbage with a great marketing ploy. It exploits 9/11 worse than Giuliani too.

To be honest, I'm not much of a Giants fan either---really, I'm not a big sports fan in general. Of the two New York teams, I usually root for the Jets, but we all know how they did this year. I just figured I'd lightly root for the Giants just so we could have New York representin' in the Superbowl. And yeah, I hate the Patriots too (although honestly compels me to admit that this wasn't always the case; it'd take me a while to explain, and my explanation would probably make me sound like the ultimate front-runner, so I'll do it only if you're deeply interested). Wouldn't it be awesome if the Giants upset 'em big time?

Yeah, from what I hear, Cloverfield is another exercise in trying hard not too barf from the constant camera jiggling. I barely made my way through Paul Greengrass's "documentary-style" (yeah right) shaky-cam in The Bourne Ultimatum last year; dunno if I could take even more of it in what seems, predictably, like a far less accomplished film.

About Me

By day, I'm a news assistant at The Wall Street Journal. By night, I'm a cinephile, (nonprofessional) film critic and general seeker of all that is intellectually and viscerally stimulating in life and art.